[WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

Thu Jan 5 10:49:35 UTC 2006

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway
> Sent: Thursday, 5 January 2006 21:25
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads
> 
> On 1/5/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> > > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Garion1000
> > >
> > > On 1/5/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > > > . People of the same POV have always found each other on
> > > Wikipedia, &
> > > > Userboxes are hardly a powerful new tool to accomplish this.
> > >
> > > But userboxes makes it a lot easier to do so. Look it two 
> AFD's. The 
> > > one for some catholic encyclopedians and the gay rights in iraq 
> > > article.
> >
> > So what are you saying? It should be *hard* for Wikipedians to find 
> > others with similar interests?
> >
> 
> Well it shouldn't be so absurdly easy that it fosters campaigning. 

Campaigning for what, precisely?

> This is an encyclopedia, not a dating service.

It seems to me that Wikipedia is very good as an encyclopaedia compared with
everything else on the web, and very poor as a dating service, blog site,
chess-playing site etc when compared to other sites. Do people really come
here for these secondary reasons when there are other, better places
available?

Peter (Skyring)